Catherine Mangasira
Kopa Lipa
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Project Name
Kopa Lipa
Team Leader
Catherine Mangasira
Team Members
Anna Rweyemamu and Godwin Mloka
Theme
Develop and encourage linkages between young people and economic opportunities
Solution
In Tanzania, microfinance is viewed as a viable option to alleviate poverty by making sure that low income clients access reliable and useful financial services. Microfinance activities can be summarised as deposit taking loan activities and non-deposit loan activities. It is estimated that microfinance service providers have a combined outreach of approximately 500,000 clients, which is only about 5% of the estimated total demand. This indicates that there is untapped potential to grow the microfinance industry. Key competitors for Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) include co-operative based societies, mobile money providers and informal loan providers such as loan sharks.MFIs have a healthy appetite for technology and often use it as a means to increase their customer base. A major challenge they are facing is moving into the mobile money lending space which is currently dominated by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).We are developing and piloting a mobile-based lending platform which can be used by MFIs to provide micro credit products. It will use an algorithm based on customer use of MNO services to assess credit-worthiness, assign individual credit limits, and lend to new loan applicants.
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